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Francis Ford Coppola: US politics is at ‘the point where we might lose our republic’
Speaking at Cannes, the director says his reworking of ancient Rome’s Catiline conspiracy has become ever more prescient
The US, whose founders tried to emulate the laws and governmental structures of the Roman republic, is headed for a similarly self-inflicted collapse, director Francis Ford Coppola has said at the premiere of his first film in more than a decade. Megalopolis, which premiered at Cannes on Thursday night, draws inspiration from the Catiline conspiracy to overthrow the rules of the Roman republic in 63BC and is set in a New York-like metropolis of the future. The maker of Apocalypse Now, The Conversation and The Godfather said he was observing a trend “towards the more neo-right, even fascist tradition” not just in the US but across the globe, “which is frightening, because … anyone who was alive during World War II saw the horrors that took place, and we don’t want a repeat of that”.
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